Seven people were injured and one was killed in Rochester's latest mass shooting incident.
The place: The Mexican Village Night Club at 547 State Street. It is not known for offering fine, ethnic cuisine or classy entertainment. That bar has previously received complaints about loiterers, drug sales and street fights that began in the bar. The Rochester Police Department was aware of it, and the city has been unable or unwilling to do anything about it, like close it down as a nuisance.
The time: 2 AM. Closing time, when previous incidents of violence took place there.
The perpetrator(s): Who knows? It wasn't an ISIS extremist. It was probably a home grown, low life domestic asshole.
State Street is a main artery leading into downtown Rochester. The police had to close it and other side streets from Lyell Avenue to Jay Street while continuing their investigation. That, too, is a nuisance for decent, law abiding citizens who must use those streets.
RPD and City Hall are not to blame for all of the violent assholes who run amok in Rochester, although one might think that there might have been greater surveillance at a location that is a known nuisance.
Nor are stiffer gun laws the answer, because only law abiding citizens follow them. Criminals don't.
The courts are hampered by political correctness, since judges and district attorneys are elected to their positions, continually seeking to be re elected and don't want to ruffle the feathers of voters from certain socio-economic groups. That's why plea bargaining has become a bitter joke. The severity of the crime is played down and a lower sentence given.
The answer might be enacting stiffer penalties, and enforcing them, on people convicted of crimes involving guns where people are killed or injured.
Like public beheadings.
Update: There were actually eight shooting victims, plus the dead man. The eighth victim was not on the scene, but taken to a hospital by a private vehicle. Two of the victims are in guarded condition. One of the eight victims was a sixteen year old boy.
ReplyDeleteCity councilman Adam McFadden, whose district is the southwest, was on the scene to make one of his now prosaic statements about violence.